“Don’t—don’t say that!” the young man implored. “There is no harm done. I was to blame for ever talking with you about the matter. How could I expect you to treat it with seriousness or secrecy? You couldn’t know that it had ever been a sore affair with us. Don’t be troubled. Gilbert’s friendship isn’t built upon such a slight basis that it can’t bear—” A stifling recollection of the delicacy, passing the love of women, with which they had always treated each other smote upon him: what could Gilbert think of his delicacy now? “I can make it all right with him,” he continued, as soon as he could get breath.
“With him?” murmured Mrs. Farrell. “Then you forgive me?”
“I had nothing to forgive,” said Easton, with all his love in his face; so that she looked away and blushed. “Don’t think of it any more; it’s nothing.”
“How generous you are! Oh, women couldn’t be like that! How shall I thank you? I’ll never forgive myself in the world—that’s how,” she said, a faint smile dawning on her contrite face.
“That would be a poor way. I want you to be friends with those I—like.”
“Do you mean Mr. Gilbert?”
“No, I don’t mean Gilbert.”
Mrs. Farrell cast down her eyes. Then she bravely lifted them. “I will do whatever you say,” she breathed, and a radiant light came from her face as she rose and stood fronting him. “After what I’ve done you have a right to command me. But now you must let me go. I have some things to do. You’ve made me so happy.”
“And you me!” he said, and he took her hand, which he dropped after a moment, and walked away, giddy with his insensate joy. All his soul was flattered by the far-hinting sweetness with which she had used him, and he was contented in every pulse. When he despaired he had felt that he must tell her he loved her, and let any effect follow that would, but now he was patient with the hope which he hoped she had given him; for his confidence did not go beyond this. He loved too much to believe himself loved or to perceive that he was encouraged. To the supreme modesty of his passion her kindness was but leave to live; and he was abjectly grateful for it. He lifted his thoughts to her with worshiping reverence; it was heaven to dwell in the beauty of her looks, her attitudes, her movements; the sense of her self-reproachful meekness possessed him with the tenderest rapture. How could he expose this to the harsh misconception of his friend? How could he explain her blamelessness as he felt it? He knew the sort of sarcastic quiet that Gilbert would keep when he should set about making him understand that he, Easton, was alone guilty in any wrong done him; that he, Easton, had given her the clue which she had afterward followed up, from an ignorant caprice, in her talk with Gilbert; that she had bitterly upbraided herself for her error, and had dreaded its effects with a terror that he had hardly known how to appease. When he thought of Gilbert’s incredulity, his heart beat fiercely; and he felt that he could not suffer it. Yet the thing could not go without some effort on his part to assure his friend that he had not been disloyal, and how to give him this assurance he did not see. No, he could not speak of it; and yet he must. A veritable groan burst from his lips as he mounted a little hillock in the road and took off his hat to wipe away the drops of sweat from his forehead. Whither had all his bliss vanished? A thrush sat in the elm tree over him and sang long and sweet, and his heart ached in time with the pulses of that happy music. A little way off, under the shadow of this tree, Gilbert lay upon the grass, with his face up to the sky; and it was to Easton, when directly he caught sight of him, as if he had laid him there dead. He fearfully made a little noise, and Gilbert opened his eyes, and, looking at him, sat up. “I was waiting for you,” he said, gravely and not unkindly. “I supposed you had gone over to the farm, for I did not find you at the hotel. Easton,” he continued, “I saw Mrs. Farrell a little while ago. Perhaps you’ve just come from seeing her?”
“Yes,” answered Easton.